Walkthrough:27. Arabian Knights
This fight is far more fair than an that we've seen so far. This map pits you, along with Pig and Snake, versus Sultan to the northeast, and Saladin to the southwest. The big problem with this map is that, beyond for a bit of farmland and trees, there are no resources at all! The only stone and iron is under the control of Saladin, and there's no way for your workers to safely get in and out. To tackle this one, place your market, stockpile, and granary as usual. You might want to place as many farms as you can quickly before Pig and Snake take up all the land (though a kind ally would allow them a couple farms each), but place an armory, Engineer's Guild then buy 10 stone and 15 bows. Build a stone tower as close to Sultan as possible, then a small gatehouse right next to it so your men an go up and down the tower. Place a barracks and recruit all 15 archers and two engineers. Race all but five archers up the tower. Leave the remaining archers atop your keep to defend against Saladin. Build a mangonel on the tower and man it, having it sling rocks at Saladin constantly. Also place some braziers on the tower to give your archers more power. This should be enough to cripple Sultan's forces; check back in now and then and re-man your tower as needed. Now that you've taken care of Sultan (Pig or Snake will probably kill him in their own time) it's time to get your economy going, but what to do? I suggest converting wheat into bread and wood into crossbows. I would also try to get one hops farm as well as a brewery and inn going for extra popularity you can turn into tax money. You will probably have to spend some money on more archers or crossbowmen for your defense, but once you have steady money coming in it's time to expand. Buy in enough stone to build another gatehouse and tower facing Saladin (don't build it too far out or his mangonels will crush it) and man it with archers and a ballista. Build a church and cathedral once you have a spare 1500gp, and use the extra popularity for taxes or lower your rations so you can sell excess food. Saladin started sending catapults my way, which I countered by sending a suicide wave of archers to kill the first few, then I built a few more adjoining towers and let the ballistas destroy the catapults as they came. Just be careful; check your towers and buy in stone as needed to repair them. How you destroy Sultan is up to you; in my case Pig did it for me once Sultan was weak enough. Otherwise if your archers have slain all his bowmen, I suggest 20 or so monks from your cathedral as a cheap and easy way to murder him. Saladin is trouble, especially since the more you let him do his own thing, the more money he'll get. My apporach was to target his southwestern stone and food production. I covered Sultan's farmland with dairy farms and I pooped out bows, crossbows, and leather (don't be afraid to buy in wood if your trees run out). Once I had a force of roughly 100 each archers and crossbowmen, and walked them through the gauntlet of Saladin's mangonels, ballista, and archers all the way to the northwestern corner of his his little resource bounty. A lot of my guys died (in fact I needed two tries to get it right) especially since he has a force of bowmen and swordsmen defending his quarries, but if enough of your guys survive (at least 20 crossbowmen and 30 more of either archers or crossbowmen) you should be able to deny him access to his quarries and farmland, which will hamstring his cash flow. Saladin's mangonel towers were dealt with by trebuchets until I got a lucky hit that demolished but didn't completely destroy his towers (so they were unusable and rebuildable). Then I built a series of adjoining towers until I was as far out as I could. Then I produced a line of towers creating basically a wall facing Saladin that I filled with archers, crossbows, and mangonels that shelled his walls (and his rebuilt towers when I accidentally destroyed them and they were rebuilt) to waste his money and create confusion. The Pig attacked yet again and nearly killed Saladin before I could get a finishing strategy going, so I bought some maces and macemen rushed him before Pig could steal my glory. Were it not for that however, I probably would have built up some swordmen, macemen, or monks, and allowed trebuchets or tunnelers to tear down the walls before going in. Good luck!